There’s an old saying in Hollywood: It’s not the length of your film, it’s how you use it.
BEN STILLERI don’t think it’s ever easy to be funny. I find it easy to amuse myself with a certain sort of cynical dark humor that tends toward the meaner side, like my character in Happy Gilmore. Those kinds of characters come easily to me.
More Ben Stiller Quotes
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I think the most serious genre is the thing you’re going to get the most out of. If you’re trying to satirise a comedy, it’s hard to do that – it doesn’t really work as well. But I love the war movie genre and I’m a fan of all those movies that are part of what this movie is.
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When I was growing up, This is Spinal Tap [1984] was the ultimate comedy, and it was the kind of thing I wanted to do. But you get to a point with parody where you can’t go much further because ultimately it’s feeding off of somebody else’s creativity.
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Words can only hurt you if you try to read them. Don’t play their game!
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People like to define you through what they’ve seen you do. There are aspects of my personality, I guess, that come through on-screen, but I don’t sit around thinking, ‘I’ve been a bumbling suitor all my life.’
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I wanted to be funny for people who didn’t care about fashion at all, to just to kind of exist as a silly character.
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I’ve had a very good career and I’m grateful that the public has had some level of acceptance and appreciation of my work.
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All those rumors about her being underweight are trash. She’s [Calista Flockhart] gorgeous.
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I’m Jewish, but my mom’s Catholic, so the guilt area is covered. I have the highest expectations, along with the lowest. I tried to put as much of myself as possible in Reality Bites, but in terms of my humor, I’m still trying to figure out what my sensibility is. It’s a process, really.
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There’s a sense here in L.A. that everybody’s aware of everybody all the time. It’s funny but we choose it. People who are here want to be here, including me.
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The cliches are that it’s the most generic Starsky and Hutch plot you can find.
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Paul is Starsky, and I met him before shooting. He was very kind and encouraged us to go with what we wanted to do. It was very sweet to see them back with the car after 25 years.
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It was Mick Jagger’s idea.The other one was Simple Plan, based on a novel by Scott Smith. It’s a great book – really stark, not a comedy – about a guy who finds $4 million in a plane crash and decides to keep it.
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I have not been an easygoing guy. I think it’s called bipolar manic depression. I’ve got a rich history of that in my family.
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I think you never want to have to go into the scene having to improvise; you want to make sure its working on the page. But I do like to have the ability to try stuff just in the moment, to give it some sort of spontaneity.
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You have to stay in character in between takes.
BEN STILLER